Details are below in the Housing Update section. Note that at this time, we do not have a house picked out in New Hampshire, although there are sever
Not Enough Vitamin N*
This from Reuters (I’m duplicating the article below, because they don’t maintain links past a month or two.)
Today’s Toddlers Act Like Teens?
Thu November 6, 2003 07:47 AM ET
By Matthew Jones
LONDON (Reuters) – Kids today. They waste hours in front of the TV and get their parents to spend money on designer clothes and haircuts. And they're not even three years old!
A new survey in Britain says toddlers are increasingly leading a lifestyle once associated only with moody adolescents.
“Today’s toddlers act like little teenagers—they've been there, done it and got the T-shirt—but they miss out on good old-fashioned, imaginative fun,†said Karen Pasquali Jones, editor of Mother and Baby magazine, which commissioned the survey.
The survey showed that by age three, 42 percent of youngsters have a television in their own room and 50 percent have a CD player. The average toddler spends more than two hours a day watching TV.
Two thirds of mothers said they bought designer clothes for their toddlers, while 86 percent spent more on their child's clothes than they did on their own. More than a quarter of the little consumers “choose their own haircut.â€
Tots have sophisticated taste—61 percent will eat Italian food and 51 percent will eat Indian or Chinese food, though only three percent like sushi.
But parents of previous generations will not be surprised to learn that mothers still describe mealtimes as “nightmares,†with three-quarters of toddlers refusing to eat and over half opting to throw their food rather than swallow.
Three-quarters of mothers say their children’s behavior has affected their relationship with their partners and just under half declared it has “wrecked†their sex lives.
© Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved.
*The term vitamin N, was, as far as I know, coined by Dr. James Dobson, the well-known conservative child psychologist. Children need to be told “no†on occasion.
The War of the Worlds—65 Years Ago
The War of the Worlds—65 Years Ago
On October 30, 1938, The Mercury Theatre on the Air, starring Orson Welles, presented a radio version of H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds. It became famous because many people (although not as many as the media later reported) heard only part of the broadcast, presented in the form of a breaking news story, and thought earth really was being invaded by Mars.
If you’d like to hear this historic broadcast (it’s also one of the best radio plays ever done, actually), you can stream via the link below.
Listen to The War of the Worlds broadcast (presented via streaming RealAudio).
The Spoiling Begins
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Okay, Nichelle is making me post this, to illustrate just how big a change having a daugher can make. Before Naomi, you wouldn’t catch me near “girl toys,†or clothing of any kind. Then, with Naomi on the way, something happened to my mental processes. First was the dress I bought in México. Then came the Barbie. I … I don’t know what has come over me, although co-worker Judy Hirsch told me this would happen.
The remaining issue is which of the geekwear t-shirts/creepers to purchase. I can’t decide amongst “Newbie,†“TCP/IP,†and “Geek in Training.†Which would you pick?
It May Be Time – 1:28 p.m.
We’re off to the hospital. Contractions are coming quite frequently.
It Was Indeed Time!
Nichelle’s contractions started around 11:00 a.m. She phoned me at noon, and said, “I think you’d better head home.†The contractions were already causing her to be in a lot of pain, so I headed out almost immediately. I ran in to the house (discovered our friends Phil Luchon and Shelby Sohmer were already there to help, Phil by watching the kids and Shelby by assisting Nichelle), checked the Naomi mailing list (a good thing—I had never switched it over from test mode to mail to the entire list), updated the BLOG, grabbed some food to take with me and all of Nichelle’s stuff, and headed off to the hospital, expecting the usual long process of labor and delivery.
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We arrived at the hospital at about 1:50 p.m. Nichelle’s contractions had increased in severity and frequency, and she was already dilated about 5 cm. She spent 10 minutes in a pre-labor room, before they moved her to the labor room.
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Things were moving very fast. So fast, in fact, that we weren’t sure a doctor would arrive in time—he almost didn’t—a paramedic was there as a backup. Nichelle’s contractions were so strong and frequent, that there was no way for her to get the epidural she’d planned on—this was going to go “natural,†an issue we managed to deflect. After I think only about 15 minutes of excruciating labor pain (I’ll let Nichelle describe with another time), Naomi joined the outside world. The doctor said, “Congratulations, you have a beautiful boy,†and then quickly corrected his statement.
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So, Naomi Nichelle (“NaNiâ€) Wilcox was with us on the outside, officially born at 3:02 p.m., but I later discovered the room clock was wrong, so it was really 2:55 p.m.
Naomi Nichelle (“NaNiâ€) Wilcox, future Geek goddess, weighed in at 7 pounds, 4.8 ounces, and measured 20 inches. We are thrilled to have our little girl. Friends and family visited. We ate birthday cake and relished the joy of being new parents. Nichelle and Naomi are both fine—no complictions or other problems. We’re all tired. Whew!
Our Trip to Boston’s Museum of Science
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On Friday, October 3, I Took Isaac and David, and Isaac's best friend Nda (En-dah) (John opted out) to the Museum of Science on Friday (I took a half day off, and picked Isaac up from school, and we went by subway). We had a great time. The digital camera I bought lets me get low-light and other kinds of photos I could never capture before.
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It’s funny, because you never know what will really interest the kids. David now wants to go back (he asks approximately every day now). For some reason a 2300-year-old mummy in the life sciences section fascinated him. Later, he was a little mad that they put a sign up asking people not to sit in or stand in the tyrannosaur footprint.
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One very cool new exhibit was sponsored by Microsoft – it's a mock-up of the “cockpit†of the Wright Flyer, linked to a huge projection screen and M$ Flight Simulator 2004. The Wright Flyer was very difficult to fly – not so bad climbing and leveling off (although it would stall very easily), but banking (by weight-shifting) was usually disastrous for us. Friday afternoons and evenings the museum is mostly empty, so we all had plenty of chances to try it.
Whoa! (Swiped from Bryan at psacake.com)
While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with it. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6†in the air with your right hand.
Your foot will change direction. (From psacake.com.)
Housing Update
Tonight we have our potential buyers doing a home inspection on our house in Brockton. Assuming it works out well (and it should), we will probably place an offer on a spacious house in Northern Nashua, across from the Nashua municipal airport. For more details, try our Handy-Dandy MLS Gizmo, and use MLS number 119010. The MLS number on our house in Brockton is 30752457.
Coming Soon to Country [Not] Near You—Your Job
My yaar Pankaj Verma sent me a link to this article this morning, which predicts that by 2015, 348,028 U.S. computer jobs will move “offshore.†This is a rather frightening prospect for those of us who have been burned by the dot-bomb crises of the past few years, although this report includes the comforting statistic that approximately 1,761,000 new jobs will open up in these areas by 2010.
While I’m on it, I still have two former co-workers who are looking for work after the big corporate “treatment†a year ago by [fomer employer’s name deleted]. These are both hard-working, highly-skilled, dedicated people, who, frankly, don’t deserve to have been unemployed as long as they have. Grrrrrrrrr.
The Dumbing Down of America—It’s Microsoft’s Fault
When did supercede become a nonstandard word? I use Microsoft Word’s grammar checking, set to very strict use (I’m something of a purist), and it flagged supercede as being nonstandard. Have people really become that uneducated? The answer—obvious as it is—frightens me.